You're Doing Great Mom

Angie is a successful therapist, working with individuals as well as companies, big and small. This episode was awesome, with so many interesting and thought-provoking nuggets of wisdom, ideas, and stories about motherhood and how we can shift our perspectives about it in the context of applying it to roles of leadership and life in general.

"That's part of my mission, really, in working with everybody I do, is trying to get the word out that the more you can be with 'stuck' the more you're life is going to transform, because every time you go to learn something new, whether it's changing your golf swing… changing a part of their skill, they're gonna go through a chaos phase as they relearn things. So if every time you see 'stuck' as it means you did something wrong, you're gonna back off and you're not gonna get the learning. It's important that we spread that - that stuckness means you are one step away from change."

I don't think I've laughed so hard recording an episode. Michelle Dry is my guest today, continuing the series about women who are not mothers. Michelle is hilarious, multi-talented, creative, and full of life as she travels the world in her job as a communications director on a cruise-line. She is also a prolific writer/author of many books, already published by herself and available on Amazon. Her most successful book is The Hairy Legged Mystery, a children's book about a mysterious creature with hairy legs.

Check out Michelle's website

https://michelledry.com/

My guest this week is Rachael Talbot-Frank. Rachael doesn't have children of her own and is not a mother.

These last few weeks and in the next few episodes, the topic has been about women who do not have children. I'll be speaking to women who share their story of not becoming a mother. It's something I think people should hear about. There's always that uncomfortable, politically correct awkwardness that looms over us when we address it. There's always the elephant in the room and the curious, what's her story? And I think many women who aren't mothers don't get a chance to tell theirs.

Rachael's experience is possibly unique because for her, everything changed when she was twenty-one. Something happened to her body which she had to heal tremendously from on an emotional and mental level, not to mention learn how to cope on a physical level. This shift is what catapulted her relationship to herself as a woman without children. It also formed her view on the possibility of not having children and why she didn't want to risk passing down her chronic illness. This made her believe that there's a natural reason for her NOT to have children.

Inside her journey to heal from her illness, to experience shame that her body 'failed' her and then having to go through the process of whether or not she wanted to become a mother, Rachel has discovered her own power within herself as a woman who is nurturing, caring, beautiful, and owning her amazing body.

Listen to Rachel share her experience in the context of not being a mother and her unique story talking about health challenges and how she's living a life she loves and continues to love.

Noreen Sumpter is a personal life coach who lives in Brooklyn. She and I have been close friends for nearly 20 years. She talks about how, since the age of 13, she knew she did not want to have children. I wanted to open up this conversation because it's just not something people often talk about. Maybe because it's not a very comfortable subject. Maybe because people just don't know what to say. It's not like you can just ask a woman (who isn't a mother), "So why don't you have any children?"

The Economist recently had an article on this very subject. Childless women are more common, significantly more than from the 1940s. The reasons range from choosing not to have children (desire not to), to medical reasons, and every possible scenario in between.

My guest today, Noreen Sumpter, shares her story and gives us her perspective of what motherhood is to her.

Enjoy!

"I think subconsciously I was looking for an outlet. I think I wanted a way out, and I wanted something more in my life, a creative outlet because I knew I wasn't getting that from my career. So I was happy to take that time away, and then I had Noah and then it was just me at home with Noah and Yasmin. And I look back at that time and oh my gosh, it was so special."

Samina Courtin is the creator and owner of Mon Dessert, a London-based patisserie company. She specializes in beautiful and delicious macarons, and she has also designed cooking kits which she sells in Fortnum and Mason, Harrods, and other high-end specialty shops.

Samina is a mother of two adorable happy children, a girl and a boy, in primary school in Southwest London. Her husband is French and they met through mutual friends.

Her career started in a very male-centered in an e-commerce digital marketing company, using her interests in math and science. But she felt that something was missing. Working in the marketing industry wasn't allowing her to explore her creative side.

"It was strange. I was the first person to become pregnant in my company. It was a very young industry. You know, you're thinking, it was 2009 and that's when I first went on maternity leave. The internet world and how to monetize that and how to create e-commerce platform, it was just exploding. It was still a very young industry and I was one of the oldest there and I wasn't even 30. And when I came back (from maternity leave), I think it was the financial crisis, literally I walked into the office and I didn't recognize anyone. I felt like I was being given shoddy work, the stuff that nobody didn't want to do. When I became pregnant with Noah, and I took my second maternity leave, obviously one after the other during a financial crisis, and they were like, 'uh, we really would like you NOT (to do that) …"

Motherhood is what opened her natural artistic and creative side. Being at home with her two small children inspired her to start exploring her home skills, especially baking and cooking. She shares about how she started her company Mon Dessert and how she is living her multi-passionate and amazing life with her husband and two children.

Check out my episode with Samina listen to her fabulous and interesting story. It's so amazing and colorful and 'tasty'. Oui Oui!

Visit Samina's website http://www.mondessert.co.uk/. Connect with her on Instagram @mondessert and Twitter @mondessert

[This episode is about miscarriage. Please understand that it may trigger sensitive emotions while listening, although the purpose of this episode is to spread the information about this topic so more women can learn about how common miscarriage is.]

Lara Martins is a principle in the London production of "The Phantom of the Opera". Lara is from Portugal, and studied theatre in the UK, and has been living in the UK for the last 20 years.

I'm so happy to have Lara here with me for this episode. In searching for more topics revolving motherhood and pregnancy, I believe that it's important to talk about all possible events relating to our experiences as women becoming mothers. One of them is miscarriage, which, for many people who do not know, it is quite common. Many women have experienced a miscarriage, and because of the sensitive emotional pain involved, most women do not know how to share their experiences.

When Lara accepted my invitation to be on my podcast, she was very open and generous in sharing her story about her miscarriage.

"When you have a miscarriage you don't really think that because obviously miscarriage is quite a sensitive subject, and not many women talk about it. So you have no idea that having a miscarriage is quite common. It happens a lot. When you are confronted with a miscarriage it is very traumatic. It's definitely one of the hardest things I had to deal with in my life. You know, the first thought you have is 'what have I done wrong; did I provoke this' and even though everybody tells you it's nothing you have done, it's nothing to do with you, it's just your body maybe rejecting something that was not viable'. BUt you just try to find the reason. You just want to know why; what have I done; What could I have done differently to have a different outcome'."

"It gave me great comfort when I was trying to recover from my miscarriage to know that actually this is so common, and talking to other women who had the same experience. Because then I didn't feel like some kind of freak, or that I had some kind of problem."

"I think when you have a very easy pregnancy, and obviously, and all the women that have never had problems in their pregnancy and never suffered miscarriages, pregnancy can be a very naive thing in the sense that when you look at that pregnancy test and it's positive you think, 'Oh great, I'm going to have a baby,' because you just had a pregnancy that was completely normal, nothing happened, everything was great, so you think, oh, this is going to be the same thing again. It's not until something goes wrong that you understand that actually quite a lot of things that can go wrong, and then becoming pregnant again it's actually very very stressful."

To reach out to Lara Martins, check out her website and send her a message: https://www.laramartins.com/

To hear another woman's experience with miscarriage, have a listen to episode 10 with Maryellen Stephens. http://traffic.libsyn.com/youredoinggreatmom/010-23-05-20172C14.53.mp3

Be sure to check out You're Doing Great Mom online. http://youredoinggreatmom.com/blog/

If you have wondered what chiropractic care is, and how it can benefit you and your family, this is a great episode to listen to.

Dr Sarah: "Self-responsibility [in regards to their health]: the allopathic health approach, as it's starting to implode on itself, more people are looking for that level of self-care which coincides with self-responsibility like, I'm going to take my health back into my own hands, then we're the perfect health profession [chiropractic] to be there to meet them at that door. Because there are thousands health professions, and when we look at the allopathic health approach and you're remaining passive within that, then there's no sense of self-responsibility. I'm gonna go to you, you're gonna tell me what I've got wrong, you're gonna give me something, I'm gonna take that and it's gonna disappear. That's called a 'treatment' where 'treat' means in its shortest form, it's creating an illusion that something doesn't exist anymore. And then, when we go to the alter-NATE health approach, where chiropractic fits comfortably in this health approach, there is a level of self-responsibility. So if you can tap in to that sense of self-responsibility that everybody is searching for, then that position's chiropractic in a way healthier arena to be able to meet those people where they're at as they are exiting this allopathic approach."

"When we have a parent is wanting to have their child checked, then the conversation is not necessarily, my child doesn't have back pain. We have parents saying that I want my child to be the best they can be."

Dr Kelly: "Usually [in our office] what we hear is 'I wish I'd heard about it sooner, I wish I'd known that there was a different way to do things.' Often, it's quite cool, we've had a couple of clients who have been in the office with their children getting checked. There's a little boy who's 5-and-a-half and he's been checked every week since he was three weeks old. His mum is such a vigilante for chiropractic. She's such an advocate."

Dr Sarah Farrant lives in New Zealand and has been a chiropractor for the last 16 years. She has been helping families by educating them how to understand the chiropractic lifestyle and how it can help benefit their health. Her company provides vital tools for generational change in health. She educates parents, children, and grandparents in living a healthier life through a different perspective with chiropractic being the baseline. You can reach her at http://vitalmoms.com/ Check out her Facebook page: Vital Moms https://www.facebook.com/Vital-Moms-250515624977388/ Or email her at [email protected]

Dr Kelly McGaughlin lives in the UK and has been in practice for 15 years, and the last six she and her husband have built their practice together. She also focuses on empowering people to approach health with a different perspective through family wellness care with chiropractic. You can reach her at [email protected].

Be sure to check out my website http://youredoinggreatmom.com/. And if you want to learn more about chiropractic, take a look at my chiropractic practice website: http://www.shiozawawellness.com/

This is Part 1 of 2 with Dr Kelly McLaughlin and Dr Sarah Farrant, who are both chiropractors and mothers.

Dr Kelly McLaughlin is from Reading UK, she has 3 boys, all home births, and she home-schools them as well. You can reach her at [email protected].

Dr Sarah Farrant is also a chiropractor, and lives in Wiaheke New Zealand (which is an island just east of Auckland). She has 2 boys and a girl, all homebirths, and all home-schooled as well. You can reach her at http://vitalmoms.com/ Check out her Facebook page: Vital Moms https://www.facebook.com/Vital-Moms-250515624977388/ Or email her at [email protected]

Dr Sarah's books: The Health Illusion: Is It Killing You? and The Vital Truth: Accessing the Possibilities of Unlimited Health

Book mention: John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

I love recording an episode in person. It's always fun. Plus, guests can bring their adorable puppies.

Harriet Waley-Cohen came in with her little adorable puppy, who ended up sitting right in between us gnawing on her bone (which is what the sporadic faint clicking noises are in the background). We had a wonderful time talking about motherhood, adversity, learning to love life, being at the forefront of being unstoppable, and the concept of having it all.

"... because mothering isn't about mothering your own children. It's about mothering the planet. It's about mothering the human race. And when I think about all those teenage girls that I grew up with when we were teenagers, what would it have been like to have had awake, aware, honest, vulnerable women like you and I come and say, 'this is what I went through, this is what it was like, this is what it's really like out there as a grown up; let me take you by the hand and help you and give you all these tips' and to get to be that person for the current generation is awesome."

She talks about changing careers from banking to becoming a speaker and a coach. She shares her difficult birth and how her son didn't sleep for the first four months of his life, and how motherhood contributes to how she speaks in front of hundreds of people. She also shares how about overcoming addiction, and through this adversity led to her incredible strength and courage, and ultimately having a life she loves.

To check out more info on Harriet Waley-Cohen, go to her website: http://harrietwaleycohen.com/ or look her up on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harrietwaleycohen/

Instagram and Twitter: @harriet_wc

http://youredoinggreatmom.com/

For the first time ever, and after a long period of discussing this, my husband (Julian) sits down with me and we record ourselves having one of our many conversations.

My husband is an intelligent dude. He went to Cambridge. He's a self-professed geek. He's good at math. And he also knows about a lot of things. People who know about a lot of things almost always think they are right. Trouble is, they aren't always right and it's nearly impossible to debate with these people.

I'm smart, but I'm not like my husband who knows a lot about a lot of things. He was the kind of kid that read 10 books a week starting from the moment he could read a full sentence. So over the years, he's consumed a lot of information.

I wasn't like that. I was a late bloomer. I didn't like reading until I was in college. And I think because of that, I was never good at debating or having conversations with really intelligent people. I'm not book-smart. I'm people-smart.

So, I thought it'd be fun to sit down and record a typical conversation between my husband and me. They tend to get heated, I often get loud and flustered, and he tends to be mostly factual (or he thinks he's being factual), but most of the time they are fun and silly, and entertaining.

Here we're talking about my last episode with Mandy Adams. I asked my husband to listen to it, hoping he'd get some insight from it, and instead, he came out analyzing the shit out of it.

That part of the conversation gets dull and boring, so we get a little bit sillier talking about what to say to a spouse when they've gained weight.

I hope you like it.

Here's my husband Julian's website to read more about him and if you're interested in contacting him.

Remember to subscribe, and post a review, especially if you liked my husband! Join me on my website and sign up to get more emails every day on top of all the other subscriptions you have. Why not? The more the merrier!